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Bill Nye 'Science Guy,' Creation Museum founder trade barbs

On his home turf at Kentucky's controversial Creation Museum, founder and creationist Ken Ham began Tuesday's nationally watched debate by arguing that his interpretation of science supports the Bible's origin story as a literal, factual account of the world's beginning about 6,000 years ago.

PETERSBURG, KY. — On his home turf at Kentucky's controversial Creation Museum, founder and creationist Ken Ham began Tuesday's nationally watched debate by arguing that his interpretation of science supports the Bible's origin story as a literal, factual account of the world's beginning about 6,000 years ago.

"Science has been highjacked by secularists," he said, offering often scant evidence while arguing that it "makes sense" and that teaching evolution in school is "imposing the religion of atheism on generations of students."

His opponent, TV's "Bill Nye the Science Guy" fired back during the two-hour-plus debate, noting that scientific findings leave little doubt that humans are the product of evolution, that the earth is billions of years old and that there is no evidence for Noah's flood or other biblical origin stories. Teaching otherwise, he said, isn't good for children or the nation.

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On the creation side, morality and Christian values are at stake, while innovation and the progress of America are at stake on the evolution side according to Ken Ham, founder of the Creation Museum, and Bill Nye "The Science Guy."

Creationism is "magical" and "absolutely not viable," said Nye in a debate moderated by CNN reporter Tom Forman and titled, "Is Creation a Viable Model of Origins in Today's Modern Scientific Era?"

The event — part media spectacle, part debate — drew more than 800 people into the Creation Museum in Petersburg and was live-streamed to hundreds of thousands of viewers in homes, churches, science centers and even bars, where people gathered to watch a high-profile science educator square off against a "young earth creationist" Christian leader.

Although Nye made a withering critique of Ham's brand of creationism and found a public platform to warn that its dismissal of established science would harm the education of children and hamper the nation's ability to innovate, some attendees said, the debate still faced criticism.

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Many secularists and scientists had said Nye's participation lent an air of legitimacy to creationism pseudo-science that distorts accepted scientific findings, including a fossil record that shows life growing more complex over billions of years. And critics said it could leave a sense that the topic is still a matter of debate, when in fact consensus among scientists is nearly universal.

"You worry about giving weight to it by even acknowledging it exists, but if you can have someone effectively denounce it, hopefully science education wins," said Robert Walker, of Dayton, Ohio, who came for the debate.

Some creationists in the crowd, such as Margaret Ikerd, of Florence, Ky., said afterward that both made good points, but it didn't change their views that are rooted more in religion than science.

Nevertheless, the showdown energized advocates on both sides of the creationism-vs.-evolution debate, a long-running battle in America's culture wars, and it proved wildly popular.

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Bill Nye "The Science Guy" and Ken Ham, founder of The Creation Museum, debate what the Grand Canyon tells us in their debate on evolution vs. creationism.

Tuesday night's event was launched more than a year ago when Nye made headlines by arguing in a viral video that teaching creationism is bad for children.

"To me it's an existential issue, I think that's why so many people are drawn to this," said Blake Ringenberg, who from a town near South Bend, Ind., with his wife, both of whom said they are Christians.

The national buzz led the $25 tickets to sell out last month in two minutes to people from 29 states. Museum officials said nearly 70 media were credentialed for the event, from the New Yorker to Buzzfeed to NBC News.

Although 911 tickets were sold, 800 attended — the others likely driven away because of the weather.

The museum paid Nye to attend, but did not say how much.

Attendees included both believers and secularists, some of whom mingled in the entry displays of the museum showing dinosaurs cavorting with humans, a café selling "creation burgers" and a gift shop selling Ham's book, "The Lie: Evolution." Several wore bow ties in honor of Nye, who often wears them.

Saying they knew many attendees had strong views, organizers asked the crowd to avoid outbursts and cheers, which they generally did.

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Bill Nye "The Science Guy" explains the importance of sex in his evolution vs. creationism debate with Ken Ham, founder of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky.

Ham, a native Australian, gave a rapid-fire presentation that essentially argued that findings in geology, biology and other fields are open to interpretation.

He argued that things such as radiocarbon dating aren't conclusive, and cited a few creationist scientists and case studies of fossil records he said cast doubt on evolution. He suggested complex systems in nature couldn't have been created by chance.

But his central argument was primarily religious, arguing that he believes the Bible to be an accurate account and at times veering into areas such as sin, traditional marriage and morality. He said the one infallible way to know about the earth history was "the word of God."

"It really comes down to interpretation," he said.

Nye took Ham to task with an avalanche of scientific findings, noting that Ham's version of a 6,000-year-old earth couldn't be true in the face of trees older than 9,000 years, and ice cores and fossil layers showing the earth to be billions of years old. He spoke of discoveries showing the universe is expanding as evidence of the Big Bang.

He questioned the story of Noah's Ark, asking whether it was reasonable to think that a ship built by a family carried 14,000 animals and ran aground safely on a mountain, and then those animals populated the earth. Nye said the Bible simply isn't a scientific text, and people shouldn't accept Ham's word, but rather look to the findings of science.

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Ken Ham, founder of the Creation Museum, claims that the Noah's Ark's story found in the Bible explains the variance in species today compared to species found in the fossil record. Bill Nye "The Science Guy" doubts the science behind the story.

"Please. You don't want to raise a generation of science students who don't understand how we know our place in the cosmos," he said, noting that many Christians do accept evolution as compatible with their religion.

Although everyone had different opinions of who won, the Creation Museum certainly got renewed attention.

The 70,000-square-foot, $27 million museum-meets-biblical theme park opened in 2007 and was quickly dubbed a "creationist Disneyland" by critics. It has drawn global attention and controversy for its claims from the so-called "young Earth" creationist movement, which believes that the Bible's book of Genesis literally depicts how the world was formed.

A Pew Research Center survey in 2013 found that 60 percent of Americans say that "humans and other living things have evolved over time," while 33 percent reject the idea of evolution, saying that "humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time."